Blizzard just posted an official list of new racial abilities coming in Warlords of Draenor. Several of these were described on Twitter by developers last week, but it's good to see them expanded in a blog post where there's not a 140 character limit!

Racials were changed for several reasons--some were just overpowered, while others would be made obsolete by the removal of Hit and Expertise in Warlords.

New Racials

Blizzard

We’re planning some changes to racial traits for Warlords of Draenor. We recently posted a Dev Watercooler (Pruning the Garden of War) that dives deeper into the philosophy behind these changes, and now we wanted to give you the full details of what’s coming.

In order to keep racials more in line with one another, we’ve decided to bring down a couple of high outliers, then establish a fair baseline and bring the other racials up to that. We’re accomplishing this by improving old passives, replacing obsolete ones, and adding a few new ones where necessary. Ultimately, our goal is to achieve much better parity among races.

There aren’t any current plans to change Pandaren or Worgen racials.

Blood Elf

Arcane Acuity is a new racial passive ability that increases Critical Strike chance by 1%.

Arcane Torrent now restores 20 Runic Power for Death Knights (up from 15 Runic Power), 1 Holy Power for Paladins, or 3% of Mana for Mage, Priest, Warlocks (up from 2% of Mana). Other aspects of the ability remain unchanged.

Draenei

Heroic Presence has been redesigned. It no longer increases Hit by 1%, and instead increases Strength, Agility, and Intellect, scaling with character level.

Gift of the Naaru now heals for the same amount over 5 seconds (down from 15 seconds).

Dwarf

Crack Shot has been removed (was 1% Expertise with ranged weapons).

Mace Specialization (was 1% Expertise with maces) has been replaced with Might of the Mountain.

Might of the Mountain is a new racial passive ability that increases Critical Strike bonus damage and healing dealt by 2%.

Stoneform now also removes magic and curse effects in addition to poison, disease, and bleed effects, along with reducing damage taken by 10% for 8 seconds. It remains unusable while CC'd.

Gnome

Expansive Mind now increases maximum Mana, Energy, Rage, and Runic Power by 5% instead of only increasing maximum Mana.

Escape Artist’s cooldown has been reduced to 1 minute (down from 1.5 minutes).

Shortblade Specialization (was 1% Expertise with one-handed swords and daggers) has been replaced with Nimble Fingers.

Nimble Fingers is a new racial passive ability that increases Haste by 1%.

Goblin

Time is Money now grants a 1% increase to Haste (up from only attack speed and spell haste).

Human

Mace Specialization has been removed (was 1% Expertise with maces).

Sword Specialization has been removed (was 1% Expertise with swords).

The Human Spirit has been redesigned. It no longer increases Spirit by 3%, and instead now increases two secondary stats by an amount scaling with character level. You can choose which two secondary stats it increases. This has not yet been implemented.

Night Elf

Quickness now also increases movement speed by 2% in addition to increasing Dodge chance by 2%.

Touch of Elune is a new passive ability which increases Haste by 1% at night, and Critical Strike Chance by 1% during the day.

Orc

Axe Specialization has been removed (was 1% Expertise with axes).

Hardiness now reduces the duration of Stun effects by 10% (down from 15%).

Tauren

Brawn is a new racial passive ability that increases Critical Strike bonus damage and healing done by 2%.

Endurance now increases Stamina by an amount scaling with character level, instead of increasing Base Health by 5%.

Will of the Forsaken’s cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes (up from 2 minutes).

Unlike the other racials that provide some type of CC-dispel, Every Man For Himself actually replaces a CC-Break PvP trinket; it isn’t in addition to it. So what you gain with EMFH is actually a trinket slot. Thus its power is very much related to what trinkets there are available. We're still determining our plan for PvP trinket itemization, so haven't decided on what to do with EMFH quite yet. It’s quite strong, and we agree that it looks unfair from those patch notes; we just haven't decided what to do with it yet. So, don't take that list as a statement that EMFH won't be changing somehow.

Digital Deluxe Edition Retiring

Blizzard

In approximately one week (no sooner than March 10), the Mists of Pandaria Digital Deluxe edition will be earning a bit of much-deserved rest in the Blizzard Archive. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your standard edition for the in-game extras or contemplating coming back to the game to check out the latest content, you might want to consider snagging the Digital Deluxe Edition now before it heads into the vaults.

If you already own the standard edition of Mists of Pandaria and are interested in upgrading, you can head over to your account management page to do so now. The Digital Deluxe edition might come back out of the archive in the future, but even the jinyu waterspeakers don’t know if or when.

The Digital Deluxe edition of Mists of Pandaria includes the Imperial Quilen Mount, the Lucky Quilen Cub pet, a Mists of Pandaria–themed Diablo III banner sigil and accent, and Horde- and Alliance-themed StarCraft II portraits. Learn more about the Digital Deluxe Edition here.

Berserking more than makes up for that when compared to the other racials.

The new Night Elf racial Touch of Elune troubles me. I don't like the idea of a racial changing the effectiveness of your character based purely on the time of day. I could really go from useful to worthless for many classes.

Comment by SoulflameTB

on 2014-03-03T13:11:03-06:00

For anyone curious, the upgrade price (if you already own the standard edition) is $20.00 for the US servers, which is the same as the difference between the prices to begin with. Getting a pet & mount for $5 less than store mounts usually go for is a pretty fair bargain even if you don't care about any of the other perks.

Comment by mgzegz1

on 2014-03-03T13:37:08-06:00

These changes are horrible lol I was actually excited when I saw that they were revamping these (so sick of seeing nothing but trolls in raids) but I can see they're still ridiculous. Some are actually useful, others are a total waste. They should just get rid of them completely if they can't make something feel unique to the actual race and keep it somewhat even.

Comment by PhantomScourge

on 2014-03-03T13:48:25-06:00

Will of the Forsaken was already near-useless. Now it's 50% more useless than before.

Yay Blizzard.

Comment by Dayvurd

on 2014-03-03T13:52:17-06:00

Touch of Elune is a new passive ability which increases Haste by 1% at night, and Critical Strike Chance by 1% during the day.

does this mean that day and night will happen in wow now? because it always seems daytime, like all the time...

Comment by Cayliax

on 2014-03-03T14:04:39-06:00

Will of the Forsaken was already near-useless. Now it's 50% more useless than before.

Yay Blizzard.

Obviously the change was aimed at PvP, where it's incredibly commonly used by casters and healers. Use your brain next time. :)

Comment by monkiy

on 2014-03-03T14:06:42-06:00

Touch of Elune is a new passive ability which increases Haste by 1% at night, and Critical Strike Chance by 1% during the day.

does this mean that day and night will happen in wow now? because it always seems daytime, like all the time...

There has always been day and night in Azeroth. Check your realm times, you may just play during it's designated day time.

Comment by vinipl87

on 2014-03-03T15:21:33-06:00

Touch of Elune is a new passive ability which increases Haste by 1% at night, and Critical Strike Chance by 1% during the day.

does this mean that day and night will happen in wow now? because it always seems daytime, like all the time...

There has always been day and night in Azeroth. Check your realm times, you may just play during it's designated day time.

He is talking about WoW "night" which is actually not really dark

Comment by Tertiam

on 2014-03-03T15:49:51-06:00

"Touch of Elune is a new passive ability which increases Haste by 1% at night, and Critical Strike Chance by 1% during the day." Well, since they are removing reforging, who knows how this will work out? I really don't like the idea of having to work with two different strengths from day to night, though. Under the current system, this would be disastrous for night elves. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Comment by Adamsm

on 2014-03-03T15:51:18-06:00

"Touch of Elune is a new passive ability which increases Haste by 1% at night, and Critical Strike Chance by 1% during the day." Well, since they are removing reforging, who knows how this will work out? I really don't like the idea of having to work with two different strengths from day to night, though. Under the current system, this would be disastrous for night elves. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

....You mean, like the Solar/Lunar thing for Boomkins that already exists?

Comment by Yevelynne

on 2014-03-03T16:10:34-06:00

So Alliance get scaling stat bonuses, but Horde get almost nil (aside from Tauren stam)? Won't this pitch most players to Alliance? Seems to increase the imbalance rather than smooth it out to me.